Buckinghamshire Schools

At Teach In’s UK Principal Interviews this September, we’ll be recruiting for a range of Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary and SEN teaching roles, in a range of schools across the lovely leafy home county of Buckinghamshire.

Our three visiting UK Principals come with the ability to hire teachers into a range of schools on behalf of the county and are offering legitimate interviews for real teaching positions. They will also be on the lookout for teachers to hire into their own schools.

About the Principal

Sharon Jarrett is currently the Principal of Amersham School having secured the position in 2006. Amersham School is now consistently within the top three performing Upper Schools in Buckinghamshire. Sharon has a positive reputation and is frequently contacted by fellow Principals to support them in a variety of capacities.

She is the chairwoman of BASH – the Bucks Association of Secondary Principal and she is the only secondary Principal representative on BASL – the Bucks Academy of School Leadership. She has been an Executive Principal to a Primary School in addition to maintaining her Principal at Amersham School and, therefore, has extensive Primary experience too.

Sharon will be providing Australian teachers with outstanding support, coaching and monitoring. She will organize and deliver PD for any Aussie teacher interviewing to work in the UK. Come along and interview with Sharon, she has a wealth of knowledge & experience covering student engagement and assertive discipline, UK curriculum, data analysis, intervention strategies and teacher development. She will chat to any Aussie teacher wanting to move to the UK about any aspect of pedagogy that might want to be explored!

About the School

“At Amersham School, we pride ourselves on our ability to provide each and every one of our students with a first class and personalised education which enables them to flourish and succeed in all areas of school life. We strive to create a supportive and structured learning environment in which individuals are challenged to realise their full potential and encouraged to be ambitious for their futures. We believe it is of the utmost importance for students to become self-confident, positive and enquiring learners and this vision underpins everything we do.

Our students are encouraged to become well-rounded and broad-minded individuals and we support this through a diverse range of extra-curricular activities. As a business and enterprise specialist we focus on the development of skills which inspire and motivate our students to become successful and confident adults. Amersham School looks forward to an exciting and promising future. Our students achieve good examination results at both GCSE and A Level. We are consistently one of the top four performing Upper Schools in the County, making sure that our students have the personal qualifications and qualities to access Post-16 education and training.

We are incredibly proud of our students and welcome the opportunity to work with and learn from those who share our dedication to innovation, improvement and success”. Sharon Jarrett

About the school

Aspire Alternative Provision (formerly The Wycombe Grange school) provides ‘outstanding’ alternative educational provision and support for secondary age students. Students attend full or part-time and are referred to the academy by schools and the Local Authority. The academy is a recently converted Pupil Referral Unit with a teaching school and enterprise centre, that has been rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted three consecutive times.

Aspire’s focus is to support young people, together with their families and schools, to reach beyond their potential and enable them to flourish by developing positive behaviours, attitudes and aspirations.

Debra Rutley is the Executive Headteacher of Aspire. Debra has been a Head
Teacher and National Leader of Education (NLE) since 2012, following 10 years as a Deputy Head at the same school, when it was The Wycombe Grange. Through this she has extensive experience of working with the most vulnerable and disadvantaged learners, as well as prior experience in mainstream schools as a classroom teacher and SENCo in mainstream schools.

As a leader, Debra sets an exceptional example to the rest of her staff of creating a positive behaviour culture and relating with the young people. She has broad experience of school to school support, particularly across Buckinghamshire. She has designed and delivered training for whole school groups as well as small school teams across a range of school settings. Within her own schools Debra leads coaching while also promoting inclusive literacy across a number of schools in the local area.

Visiting Principal: Ms Joanne Garlick Pupil Age Range: Primary School with a Pre-school class (ages 3-11) Location: Great Kingshill, near High Wycombe, Bucks

About the school

Great Kingshill CE Combined School is a wonderful place to work. The school benefits from skilled teachers, supportive parents, a very strong, forward-thinking staff team and 420 pupils aged 3-11 who are active, engaged learners always ready for a new challenge!

At Great Kingshill you will receive support and CPD opportunities to further develop your skills and will be given the opportunity to run projects, school clubs and take part in a range of events.

The school has a strong sports team and successfully competes in a range of local and district events. The school runs forest school sessions for all pupils. Their nurture provision is very strong and the well-being of both our staff and pupils is always high on their agenda. Pupils benefit from superb facilities at school, a conservation area in the school grounds, a multi-use sports area and purpose built catering facilities.

At Great Kingshill School they instil a love of learning in our pupils through developing a growth mindset approach to everything they do. This ensures our academic standards remain high against national and local authority data reports. The school has high expectations of our parents, of behaviour and of adherence to uniform.

The schools values of Hope, Love, Forgiveness, Courage, Respect and Truth underpin everything the school does, everything they believe is important. These values stand the school and its pupils in good stead whilst at school and beyond into their secondary school education and ultimately adulthood.

Message from the Principal

I have been head teacher of GKCS since September 2013. Before that, I was head teacher of a small village school also in Buckinghamshire. I began my teaching career as an NQT in a Bucks school and am proud to be working in a forward thinking, high achieving authority.

As a head teacher part of my core role is to develop my staff team as leaders – whether that be in the classroom, as subject leaders or into more formal leadership positions. I am also passionate about Professional Development opportunities for my staff – ensuring that all staff from NQTS to deputy head teachers receive high quality training that gives them the opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and experiences and to work collaboratively with other school to bring about change and improvement in our school system.

I enjoy watching our pupils faces light up when we introduce innovative lessons into the curriculum and I firmly believe that, as educators, we should light fires in our pupils’ imaginations and give them the opportunities to be the best they can be – in whichever field they choose.

Since becoming an academy in February 2018, my role has changed to that of Executive Headteacher, which enables me to focus on supporting the schools within the Academy Trust and looking for external opportunities to work collaboratively with other schools for the benefit of all pupils and to support staff development and opportunity. I am really excited about the opportunity to work with teachers from Australia who may come to the UK and to work in partnership to create even more opportunities for our pupils.

Joanne Garlick

“I would highly recommend to anyone thinking of coming to Buckinghamshire to go for it! The team at Teach In, especially my consultant Nav, have been so supportive in making sure I’ve settled in at my school, and that the whole process has been as easy as possible. It can be incredibly daunting to move across the globe, and I definitely felt that, but Nav was always available for a call (even when I was in Australia and the time difference was horrid), and was able to help me out with any queries or problems I had. He’s incredibly friendly, and I really appreciate that he made the effort to place me with a school that is such a great fit for me, and that he continues to call to check in with how I am doing to see how he can help. I’ve made such great friendships, and learned so much as a teacher in such a short time here in Buckinghamshire. Thanks Nav and the team at Teach In for making this possible!”